


Cover of Night

by tosca1390



Category: Revenge (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-25
Updated: 2011-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:06:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her only weakness, her only tender spot; it’s Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cover of Night

*

One by one, Amanda marks off names and faces; day by day, she finds it harder to separate Emily from Amanda, to keep the cool façade she’s honed for so long intact. Every moment with Victoria, the anger licks at her every nerve, makes her want to strike out with words and violence. Even as she begins to like Daniel, to admire the changes he’s tried to make in himself despite no need for it, she stills wakes up some mornings and wants to torch their home to the ground with nothing but driftwood, gasoline from her grill, and a match.

But she is disciplined and she is patient. She is even-keeled and always observant.

Her only weakness, her only tender spot; it’s Jack.

Jack comes to her back porch after the fireworks, after the party at Victoria’s, after Daniel has kissed her good night and left her to her lonely empty house. The lights are out along the line of houses. She has the alarm system around the house set up, cameras on every weak point; she knows Victoria is suspicious, knows she’s being watched. So she is hyper vigilant, hyper-aware; but still, she meets him at the base of the stairs, sand creeping up their ankles.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she murmurs as she always does, as she has every time he’s come by for the last week; ever since he put two and two and faces and memories and a dog’s loyalty together.

It had been a quiet afternoon in the bar he now owned; she stopped in just for a vodka cranberry, for a moment of peace away from the rich and the wealthy and the deceitful. Jack’s bar is a bad idea as much as it might be a haven, but the summer is wearing her thin and Daniel is almost too nice to destroy. She needs the vodka, the tart drink, to sharpen her nerves.

She doesn’t know what had finally made him piece the puzzle together. Perhaps it had been Sammy sitting at the base of her barstool; perhaps it had been the look in her eye, her smile. She feels more like Amanda in those moments at the bar than she ever does as Emily. Perhaps that was it. All that matters now is that Jack knows, Jack and Nolan, and she has some sort of base to stand on, as long as she doesn’t tell them too much.

But now, in the salty darkness, Jack looks at her as he used to, as he looked at Amanda. His hands, wide and callused, settle at her waist as if they belong. “Is it because I didn’t bring Sammy this time?” he asks, a half-smile curling the corners of his mouth.

There’s an ache in her chest, pressing and expanding outwards. She tucks her shawl closer around her shoulders, fixing her eyes on the broad line of his shoulder. It’s silly to try and have this too, she knows. She has a mission, vengeance to wreck upon those who deserve it.

Still, she can’t help but smile. It feels too real on her face and her mouth, realer than anything else in her life other than the box under her bed and the red marker there. “Maybe,” she says finally.

He pulls her into his chest. He smells warm, like resin and wood shavings and a faint twinge of alcohol. It’s homey and familiar; it makes a home in her stomach, knotting up tightly. “Amanda, what is this all about?” he murmurs near her ear. His stubble brushes against the thin skin of her neck.

She curls her fingers into his thin shirt and presses her lips to the line of his jaw. “Say it again,” she whispers, heart thudding hard in her ears.

His hand settles at the small of her back. He pulls back to look into her face, his other hand brushing the errant hair off of her face and throat. His fingertips are rough against the line of her cheek. The breeze off of the sea swallows them in a vacuum of salt and water and sand, their own little world.

“Amanda,” he says, voice low in his throat.

Tears burn behind her eyes, unfamiliar and harsh. She shuts her eyes and kisses him, tasting the sea, memories, her old life on his lips.

Later, they sit in the sand at the base of her steps, her fingers twined into his and his temple against hers. It’s the first time in months, years really, that she feels tension release from her shoulders, an unfurling. Perhaps this is what her father meant by forgiveness, and letting go, she thinks as Jack curls his hand at her hip, fingers stroking lightly and sending shivers down her spine. She can almost imagine that she is here with Jack for the summer, for a real vacation in the house that should have always been hers, and could have been theirs, if her world hadn’t shattered around her.

“How did you know?” she asks after the longest time, her voice almost lost in the breeze.

He laughs shortly, a husky sort of sound she wants to feel all over her skin. “It was a lot of things. Sammy. Your face, your smile. But—at the bar, it was the way you chewed on your straw.”

She swallows hard, turning her face to hers. Her mouth brushes his jaw with the movement. “A habit I can’t break.”

He meets her gaze, serious and handsome and dark. The moonlight shadows the strong lines of his face. “I’m glad,” he says roughly before he kisses her again.

He doesn’t know anything, really. Why she’s here, or the truth of what happened to her father, or the lengths she’ll go to finish her task. But his boat is named Amanda and he took care of her dog and he’s here, just as she always remembered.

She knows it won’t last, but she likes being Amanda in this house once more, with him.

*


End file.
